Solarix Systems Inc, a Fremont, California start-up, unveiled a line of Sparcstation-compatible machines last week that beats Sun Microsystems Inc to the punch in implementing the 64-bit Mbus implementation of Sun’s SBus. The Solarix/4 PW+ family promises to be a personal workstation series, scalable up to 40 MIPS. The entry-level kit, due out in late November, is an 18 MIPS box based on a 25MHz Sparc chip from Cypress Semiconductor, planted in what Solarix calls an A-Module – a credit card-sized processor module. To move up the line from 18 MIPS to 40 MIPS will mean replacing the A-Module, according to hardware director Ken Skala. Currently, however, the company cannot provide that upward progression since its technology is dependent on higher frequency 33MHz and 40MHz Sparc chips that are not yet available. Getting its hands on a 40MHz Sparc would enable Solarix to offer a box rated at 29 MIPS, Skala said. To go all the way to 40 MIPS will mean using a superscalar implementation, wringing 40 MIPS performance out of a 40MHz chip or 80 MIPS out of a 40MHz bus. LSI Logic, together with Hyundai and Metaflow are currently working on such a project, as are separately two unidentified US semiconductor houses, but nothing concrete is expected until the second half of 1991. When superscalar technology does become available, the 64-bit Mbus architecture, which Solarix has used throughout the line in addition to the 32-bit SBus, will come into its own. Supporting multi-processors, the Mbus is an invention of the same Sun engineer that created the Sbus, and Sun itself is believed to be trying to implement it. Solarix/4 PW+ mini-tower starter kits start at $7,000 for a diskless unit, 17 monochrome monitor and 8Mb memory. Ethernet support and a Centronics parallel port are built in. It will cost $8,000 with a 104Mb SCSI disk and a 1.44Mb 3.5 floppy. Memory is expandable to 128Mb, and 19 mono and 17 colour monitors are optional. Solarix foresees announcing its first A-Module upgrade, priced between $1,000 and $2,000 by early December, with an MS-DOS 80386-80387 co-processor. A Sparc server will follow in the first quarter. The company intends to market to resellers, on the OEM market and to systems integrators: it will not go direct.
